Dateline: above the sold garage in Portsmouth RI, 13 May 2005, 64 days to the move
Today my first feature with Esquire in my role as contributing editor was finally put to bed. It was the last of "the ten men" to make it into "the book," as they call the main article-rich portion of the magazine (new industry, new lingo to learn).
As always happens just before you go under the numbing wait til it appears in print, the magazine's equivalent of an anesthesiologist shows up asking you a lot of weird, seemingly inane questions just as you're ready to drift off to blissful slumber after your labors. He is called the "fact checker," and for the third time, mine is Tom Colligan.
Colligan is what my webmaster calls "scary smart." You feel like your entire life is on trial. You say "blue sky" and Colligan is checking weather reports. You say the world is round and he's doing the geometry. He tears your piece apart limb by limb and examines every blood vessel. When he did it on my previous strategic pieces, it was only a modest affair of checking my factual statements. I mean, he can't call me on the vision stuff.
But here, on this profile piece, he was working the material something fierce. He caught some amazing things, teaching me a good dozen bits in the process. Thorough isn't the word. This guy's almost obsessively good. You have to love his ability to ferret out assumptions and then get the data behind them. Really a wonderfully talented researcher who improves the piece in about two dozen places. I love interacting with him.
Once I am finally done with Tom (a good half-dozen phonecons, each lengthy), I have one final conversation with Mark while glancing over the "final pass" of the article (the third one in three days). I'm on my way to "Kicking and Screaming" with my four kids (Vonne Mei is literally playing the part), and Mark is working one last para til he's satisfied. Between Warren and Colligan I am feeling very attended to, which is really quite dreamy. I mean, what writer doesn't want that sort of attention to detail from an editor and researcher? Worst thing in the world is when the mag takes it without a word and just publishes it like it's perfect already. I really hate that.
So Mark and I debate this para until he gets comfortable enough to propose his solution. Basically, it's a three-sentence construction where the third one is hanging out there a bit much. Very dramatically, mind you, but open to misinterpretation.
Me, I'm coming up with all these complex additional sentences, but Warren's answer is both more effective and far more elegant. He switches sentences 2 and 3 and the whole thing now works so much better. In 200 years I never would have come up with that!
That settled, the piece is done. Last brick laid.
It's an amazing piece to me, reflecting such an amazing first-time journey as a journalist, a descriptor that fits me now about as comfortably as a suit jacket did when I was five. Still, it's fun to wear and it's fun to grow into it, so I will seek to do so.
When I look at the piece now, I am simply stunned at how different it turned out to be from the various imaginings and iterations. It's really the product of a concerted campaign to land the subject, an intense series of interviews on the ladder up to the main man, shooting the subject, all that effort at transcriptions, the studying of those transcripts, a plan put together by me after numerous lengthy conversations with Mark, a tortuous first draft, a very tortured first edit, many additional bits written by me at Mark's direction, planks of bridging text throughout by Mark himself, then fierce negotiation over every goddamn little thing you can think of throughout the text (Warren and me). Then the interview with Mark's right hand Tyler for the contributor's page entry. Then the search for a new head shot of me. Then back to the text: the fact checking, then the layouts combining text + title + intro + photos + called-out text. Then the negotiations by Mark on how much space it gets in the "jump pages" in the back, then the final squeeze to fit it in its allotment. Then we're working two or three bits until we settle on that last paragraph. Honest to God, I think this whole thing began between Warren and me in early February (maybe earlier, I would have to check my memory, or maybe just my blog) and now it's mid-May and it's finally done!
I would guess I made maybe 500 phone calls on this piece alone. I'm to the point where I sometime wear my ear piece for hours a day.
It's a big piece.
First, I imagine the subject gets mentioned on the cover.Then there's the listing in the TOC.
Then there's the contributor's entry on me.
Then there's Granger's editor-in-chief bit, which may mention the subject/article.
Then we run into the beast:
-->first page is entirely art work--very cool-->second page is title page; great title from one interview, and a bad-ass subtitle I know Warren wrote; my name and that of photographer are listed simply on lower right corner and I have to say, I dig having my name being listed so plainly there--like it's no big deal for me to be writing for Esquire--how cool is that for the kid born in Chilton WI and raised in little old Boscobel WI?; title page has solid 8 paras and another shot of subject
-->third page topped by very impressive photo, big call-out of text (mine) and bottom half of text
-->fourth page is all text with one big call-out in middle (my text), that directs reader to specific jump page where notion is explored in depth (weird, because I can't remember a mag making such a specific, pointing reference to a jump page before--Warren thought it was highly unusual too)
-->fifth straight page is all text, plus another medium-sized shot on subject
-->sixth straight (!!!!) page is repeat of fourth: solid text with big call out of text (subject's quote); then the jump to back
-->seventh page is first jump page: two solid columns out of three--all text
-->page number 8 is top halves of left and middle column, plus full right--all text
-->final page of 9 is--get this--three solid columns of all text!
Warren said he was really happy and proud of the article, and I said I was if he was. Mark has been an incredibly patient and indulgent guide and teacher in this process. He is a wonderfully generous person and a stunning stickler on details (plus, as paternal lecturers go, he's awfully easy to take, and that's a real skill for someone who needs to teach along the way). It's why I hired him to edit my two books, and why I want him to edit any others I end up writing.
It's really amazing to think I'll turn 43 soon and just in the past few years I bumped into a colleague of his stature and talent, someone whose skills match up so beautifully with mine. It makes me glad to be middle-aged, if this is what it turns out to be professionally.
I sign off with Mark saying I want his approval to get back to my second subject, a fascinating guy left hanging after one long day of interviews. Mark promises a "go" shortly. After wrapping this next one up, I'm moving on up to some really big game--a serious idol of mine.
But I can't let on too much with Warren, otherwise he'll make me do it for free, and I'll say yes.
Today's grab:
■ As Pyongyang Squirms . . .■ The intertwining of economic fates
■ The New Core offers the New Mobility